Our journey to zero complaints

We’re an organization that’s obsessed with customer service. From our call center agents all the way up to our CEO, our passion for improving customer experience is clear at every level of our company. So, when the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) released its 2015 annual report last week, we were extremely pleased to see that we achieved a double-digit decline in complaints for the fourth consecutive year.

TELUS’ CCTS complaints are down another 29 per cent this year – our largest percentage reduction to date. At 466, we account for only 4.7% of total complaints in the industry – the lowest number of any national carrier by a substantial margin, and a big win considering we have nearly 14 million customer connections across Canada.

While we’re delighted with this year’s CCTS results, we won’t be happy until every TELUS customer is happy. You have our commitment that we’ll use the information in this report, along with the feedback we receive from our customers every day, to seek out opportunities to continuously get better.

Where did it all begin?

Five years ago, we embarked on a journey to improve customer service by putting customers first. We made it our number one priority to listen to our customers – the good, the bad and the ugly feedback – to learn from our mistakes, and work hard to create a culture where we encourage our team to find and highlight poor experiences so we can fix, and learn, from them. We know we still have a long way to go, but we’re thrilled that our results show us that our actions are making a real difference. Since 2011, CCTS complaints against TELUS have dropped by 66 per cent.

We owe a huge thank you to our customers, like you, who provide us with invaluable feedback and are patient when we sometimes falter. While no one likes to receive complaints, we have found new and better ways to gather your feedback, and we recognize our team for fixing bad processes, changing cumbersome policies and for embracing customer criticism as opportunities to improve.

Our people make the difference

It took a lot of guts to ask our customers to expect more from us. But we were sure we were different and had many reasons to believe in ourselves and our strategy – including our extremely passionate and dedicated team members. And it’s not just our customer support teams that are delivering an unmatched customer experience; everyone in our company is personally held accountable for finding ways to improve our service and rallying behind our efforts.

To give you an example of how much our team genuinely cares about our customers, I’d like to introduce you to Mange Kumarasamy, one of our Network Specialists in Toronto. Mange recently took some time off and headed to Cuba for a vacation. While unwinding on the beach, Mange met a fellow Canadian who had lost his wallet and cell phone and was worried about someone racking up roaming charges on his phone. Without an Internet connection, his new pal didn’t know what to do or who to call. So, Mange grabbed his own phone to help out. In the middle of his vacation, Mange called TELUS Customer Care to ensure that the customer could enjoy a worry-free vacation.

Every day, I am inspired by new stories of our team members going above and beyond to ensure that our customers are happy. As you can see, improving customer service isn’t a short-term project at TELUS, but it’s become engrained in our culture – even on the beach!

We’re listening, and taking action!

The only way we can get Canadians to expect more from their service providers is to understand what our customers want from us. Yet, it’s not enough to simply listen to our customer complaints, we have to make real changes to how we do business.

For the past five years, we’ve been doing just that. We started with the biggest customer pain points and came to grips with what people were saying about TELUS. From eliminating activation fees, to introducing customer-friendly initiatives like TELUS Learning Centres or our device trade-in program, we’ve been taking action and making big changes. Team members are empowered to make decisions and are encouraged to take the time they need to resolve issues – and as a result, our customers aren’t rushed off the phone or out the door until satisfied. Most recently, we did a deep dive into complaints on our wireless handset repair experience. Being without your phone is painful enough, so we wanted to make the repair process as customer-friendly as possible. Now, thanks to your comments, we’ve introduced online tracking, email and SMS pickup notifications, and the ability for customers to make their own appointments in-store.

You can help us get even better

This year’s CCTS results show us that we have 466 more opportunities to prove to our customers that they can expect more from us. Across our entire team, we’re committed to listening to each and every piece of feedback, and finding opportunities to improve further. After all, we’re here to provide service for customers – so customer feedback is the key. If you have any suggestions or ideas on how we can continue to raise the bar, please head over to the TELUS Neighbourhood and let us know.